Thingamabobs

EVENTS

I’m feeling much better now after resting. Took a five hour “nap” after making that last post at 9am. I could have slept longer, but I didn’t want to completely destroy my sleep schedule. A friend I hadn’t seen in five months ended up randomly calling me to tell me he was passing through town, which forced me to actually get dressed and stop being a cranky zombie. Was great to see him though, and human interaction + delicious middle eastern food woke me up. I then proceeded to sleep eleven hours last night, which put me at about the total necessary sleep for the last two days. Had insane Harry Potter dreams involving Snape running around crying with smeared eyeliner/mascara running down his face, me as Hermione being annoyed at people asking for my help in finding books in the library (Do I look like their wizarding Dewey decimal system?!?!), and me “off set” as Hermione joking with Daniel Radcliffe how I really should have been allotted a love scene with Snape…and then Alan Rickman walks by chuckling and I die of mortification. Hooray messed up dreams!

My left eye also seems completely unwilling to focus today, despite my being up for two hours already. I’d like to chalk it up to the messed up sleep schedule, but the whole inability to focus in the morning thing has been happening more and more lately. So have the headaches, the squinting, the… yeah, I really need to go see an eye doctor. Last time I went was four years ago, and he said I would need glasses sometime in college. Well, I’m about to be a senior in college, so I’m pretty sure I’m doomed. I really don’t have anything against glasses* other than it will complete my transformation from Uber Nerd to Nerdica, Queen of the Nerds.Hmmm…glasses may not be that bad after all.

*Contacts are right out since my eyes are super sensitive and just the sight of someone adjusting their contact freaks me the hell out.

I’m starting to feel the effects of sleep, and I still have at least seven hours of blogging left. Usually 2 am doesn’t affect me like this, but I woke up at 7am and I’ve slept like crap the last three days. I think I can stay awake, but the hard part is actually coming up with coherent thoughts. Before I was ahead by a half hour, now I feel like I have about 15 minutes a post because I’m starting to move slower and slower.

So, suggestions? Caffeine? Running around to music? Giving up and letting my inner insanity take over my posts?

PS: Lost at the art contest, aw. Oh well.

This is post 35 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

Blogathon put up a challenge to post your workspace and blog about it to get sponsored, so here’s my beautiful (aka cluttered desk):If you can’t read my white board calendar, it says August. Yes, of 2008. I don’t exactly keep it updated now that I got Sunbird. Also, wood paneling. I never said I lived in a trendy apartment. It’s honestly the one thing I don’t like about the place.

Let’s look a bit closer:The paper pile! Topped off with a photo of a kangaroo rat that was the final slide to my power point presentation, and a comic I’m going to draw later. Phone, growing money pile, Sims 3 crack, Advil (going to need that later), handy dandy calculator, and my savior for the night: Pepsi.Bars of soap, so I can always stay clean! …Actually they’re just extras from hiking in Alaska. Drawing tablet will get some use later. I like my peg board – a combination of family photos, postcards, and liberal propaganda.

It’s like I Spy! …Except not as exciting. Sorry guys, did you expect me to just keep my porn stash lying around on my desk or something?

This is post 14 of 49 of Blogathon. Pledge a donation to the Secular Student Alliance here.

I apologize for asking so many random questions lately. It seems like my blog turned into “Weee I can’t make up my mind, tell me random internet people!” But I need your help for one more thing.

Saturday is the Blogathon, and I’m going to end up making a total of 48 posts in 24 hours. That’s a whole lot of blog posts. To put it in perspective for you, I average about 49 posts a month – and now I’ll have to do that in a day.

So how can you help? Send me questions, topics, interesting articles, fun videos, hilarious photos, anything. You know I generally like to talk about atheism, biology, and sex, but whatever seems interesting is fine. That way I’ll have to resort to less filler once I’ve been up for 24 hours and I’m becoming delusional. I’m already going to clutter up your feed readers with a ton of posts – I want them to at least be good posts. You can either leave a comment, email me at jmccreig(at)purdue.edu, or tweet me at jennifurret on twitter.

And if you’re not feeling creative enough to send me ideas, and you’re a poor college student like me, you can still help out my just reading and commenting on my posts on Saturday. I have a feeling I’m going to get a bit lonely once no one is online around 4 AM my time, so the occasional comments will keep me going.

I think I’m accidentally to blame for this. I sent my Alaska photo album (oops, still didn’t post those here…one day!) to them via email, and I think that magically included a friend request. I say that because it claims I sent a friend request to my dad and he accepted it…yet I never did such thing. Gah. I quickly made all the good bits of my profile hidden. They know I’m an atheist, so that’s not an issue, I just tend to have pervy/swearing status updates, which I don’t want them to see. Lame, right? My mom was the kind of person who got upset when I said “That sucks” in high school…which is especially stupid since she and my dad swear all the time. Ironically the first time I swore in front of her was during the Presidental debates when McCain made his idiotic Bear DNA quote.

Oh, and just as a side note…I think some people from the blog have been trying to friend me, but I probably have no idea who you are. So if you figure out where I am on facebook and friend me, at least include a message saying “I read you blog” or “I comment as ____” so I have an idea. Otherwise your friend request will sit in the eternal purgatory of “Pending.”

I think I’m accidentally to blame for this. I sent my Alaska photo album (oops, still didn’t post those here…one day!) to them via email, and I think that magically included a friend request. I say that because it claims I sent a friend request to my dad and he accepted it…yet I never did such thing. Gah. I quickly made all the good bits of my profile hidden. They know I’m an atheist, so that’s not an issue, I just tend to have pervy/swearing status updates, which I don’t want them to see. Lame, right? My mom was the kind of person who got upset when I said “That sucks” in high school…which is especially stupid since she and my dad swear all the time. Ironically the first time I swore in front of her was during the Presidental debates when McCain made his idiotic Bear DNA quote.

Oh, and just as a side note…I think some people from the blog have been trying to friend me, but I probably have no idea who you are. So if you figure out where I am on facebook and friend me, at least include a message saying “I read you blog” or “I comment as ____” so I have an idea. Otherwise your friend request will sit in the eternal purgatory of “Pending.”

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve finally been lured to the dark side. Maybe this was just a moment of weakness caused by the drugs – yes, yes, I’ll blame them – but, well… I’ve joined Twitter. *sobs*

I tried to hold off for so long, knowing the last thing I needed was another internet addiction…but I guess I just couldn’t help myself. Sigh. Well, as long as I’m there, why don’t you follow me? I tend to have a lot of random silly thoughts, so it should be interesting to say the least.

So I finally broke down and went to the hospital today. If you know me well, you know I have to be feeling pretty horrible to actually go to the doctor. I was raised by the “unless you’re dying, just suck it up” method, which was fine because I was never really seriously ill as a kid (just colds and such). But once my fever hit 103 and I was continuously hacking up a lung, I thought it may be smart to go. My friend was nice enough to drive me there as I tried not to cough all over him.

While I got in almost immediately, it ended up taking almost 3 hours. Twice I sat alone in the room for 40 minutes just waiting for the next test. I wondered if they had forgotten about me a couple times, and how long a normal person would wait before wandering out into the hallway. It went oddly fast to me since I think I ended up microsleeping a bit, but I felt bad for my friend sitting out in the waiting room. I really hoped he had brought something to do.

Him: Don’t worry, I got through a lot of my book. I thought it might take a while for you to get in.Me: Well that’s good. What are you reading?Him: …Twilight.Me: Nooooooooooooooo my sickness has enabled someone to read Twilight!!!

A lot of things about hospitals are kind of ridiculous. The first time I coughed they slapped one of those flu masks on me. I felt like I was in some weird post apocalyptic movie or something. I asked one of the nurses if they were standard or just for the swine flu scare, and she said they do them during flu season but they were specifically doing them for swine flu now. As cool as it would be to say you survived swine flu, I was kind of hoping it wasn’t that.

They also wanted to do a chest x-ray (to make sure I hadn’t literally coughed up a lung, I suppose) and they wanted to wheel me out on a bed to the x-ray room. A little odd, I thought, since I’m feverish and coughing but I can still, you know, walk, but whatever. Maybe that’s just hospital protocol. So I hop on for the ride…and the x-ray room is literally across the hall. Really? Was that necessary? Though my favorite thing about being female and going to the doctor is how they ask you if you’re pregnant a thousand times.

X-Ray lady: Is there any chance you may be pregnant?Me: Probably notX-Ray lady: Probably not? Here they marked you as “no.”Me: Well she asked if I was on birth control, and I am.X-Ray lady: *not amused* …Well we can do a quick pregnancy test to make sure. Do you want to?Me, What I Wanted to Say: Honestly, it’s highly unlikely that I’m pregnant. Yes, it’s theoretically possible even with birth control, but you know what? If I was, I would without a doubt abort that thing. So x-ray away, you’ll just be helping me out.Me, What I Actually Said: Nah, I think I’m fine.

It’s probably a good thing that she couldn’t see me smirking under my flu mask.

Three hours and many (probably expensive) tests later, the nurse tells me “It’s just (just?) bronchitis.” You know, you think they would have just guessed that when I walked in coughing and feverish, and immediately told them that my friend had bronchitis. Sigh. Oh well. I’m still hacking to death, but now I have a slew of drugs that will hopefully kick in soon. Mmm tylenol with codeine. Maybe I’ll actually be able to sleep tonight.

– got a flat tire– developed a bad cough– failed to get my tire fixed at Walmart– got trapped in said Walmart for almost 2 hours– developed a fever– didn’t sleep because of coughing and fever, even with Nyquil– completely lost my voice– had our water main break, so now we have to boil all of our water– drank a glass of water before finding this out– found out my flight to the Evolution conference in Idaho (which someone else booked for me) has a 9 hour layover in Seattle

I’m just waiting for the roof to collapse on me at this point. The fever bugs me the most. I hate the whole “I’m freezing where’s the blanket, jk now I’m sweating, omg I’m freezing again, nope now I’m hot” thing. To add insult to injury, I have Katy Perry’s “Hot N’ Cold” stuck in my head, even though I don’t think that song is supposed to be describing body temperature.

Not only could Walmart not fix my tire (nail pierces the rim, apparently) and it took them 1 and a half hours to figure this out, but now I have a fever and I’m all achy. I blame extended exposure to Walmart =(